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I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Strongly
Question
Asks
Live
Men

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
Zadie Smith
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You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.
Zadie Smith
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
Zadie Smith
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Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.
Zadie Smith
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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
Zadie Smith
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Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
Zadie Smith
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I have a natural tendency to feel well about the world, I suppose, one way or another. But then there is the problem of pain. There are things like [Abraham] Lincoln's beloved little boy dying.
Zadie Smith
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I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.
Zadie Smith
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
Zadie Smith
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Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
Zadie Smith
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He was bookish, she was not he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.
Zadie Smith
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Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.
Zadie Smith
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English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
Zadie Smith
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When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.
Zadie Smith
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All tastes are expressions of belief.
Zadie Smith
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To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.
Zadie Smith
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The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.
Zadie Smith
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Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
Zadie Smith
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When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
Zadie Smith
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Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.
Zadie Smith